PEKIN — A man accused of kidnapping and killing his wife rejected his attorneys’ advice last April when they told him not to plead guilty. Phouvone Sophanavong says he’s changed his mind.

Whether he’ll get a second chance to defend himself in the case that put him in prison virtually for life now hinges on his claim that he received “ineffective counsel” and was “not in a right state of mind” when he pled guilty.

Sophanavong, 45, was convicted of the first-degree murder of Langdao Phangthong, who was found shot to death in her parked car in Peoria a day after he kidnapped her as she arrived to work in Pekin last November.

Tazewell County’s chief public defender told Circuit Judge Michael Brandt on Friday he would assign a new public defender to Sophanavong’s case in light of Sophanavong’s claim against his first two attorneys.

One of them, Mark Wertz, in April told Brandt, “We were definitely prepared to take (the case) to trial,” but respected Sophanavong’s wish to plead guilty and accept a 55-year prison term.

When Brandt asked Sophanavong then if he was satisfied with that agreement, Sophanavong replied, “No, but I’ll still take it.”

In late May, however, Sophanavong filed a motion seeking to withdraw his guilty plea and vacate the sentence. On Friday, when Brandt asked him to be more specific about his complaints against Wertz and co-attorney Julie Keller, Sophanavong said he didn’t completely understand the murder charge against him.

“They said ‘premeditated.’ I didn’t understand that,” Sophanavong said in reference to the accusation he had planned or intended to kill Phangthong when he shot her twice in the chest. “It’s not true.”

Brandt scheduled a hearing for Aug. 29 to begin the process toward his decision on whether to allow Sophanavong to rescind his guilty plea.

A month before Phangthong was killed and after she had left her husband, she said Sophanavong showed her a handgun he said he would use to kill her and himself if she didn’t return to him, according to court records.

Before dawn Nov. 4 a witness saw Sophanavong accost her in the parking lot of a parts packaging firm where she arrived for work and force her back into her car. The vehicle sped away into the dark as the witness tried to chase it.

The next morning Phangthong was found dead in the car parked in a Peoria hospital’s parking deck several blocks from Sophanavong’s home.

Sophanavong, armed with a handgun, held police at bay from inside the home for nine hours. He told them he shot Phangthong when she tried to deploy a Taser stun weapon during her abduction.

Page 2 of 2 - The standoff ended when Sophanavong shot himself in the chest. He recovered and was taken to Tazewell County Justice Center, where he remained on suicide watch before his guilty plea.